I want a distro to stick with

F

FatDroid

Member
Joined
Apr 12, 2023
Messages
38
Reaction score
11
Credits
461
Hello hello, how is everyone?

I want a distro that I can stick with, something a bit more advanced than Mint. I have no issues with it at at all as it works as it should and it offers (almost) all I want, but its missing a couple of things and feels a bit too beginner friendly for what Im looking for. Im not someone with years of expertise and experience with Linux, but Im capable of doing quite a bit with the OS and using the terimnal isnt a problem.
Mint doesnt have exactly what I would like, such as KDE desktop with support - it is available on Mint but it has not been supported for years. Less hardware usage would be nice too, my laptop isnt lacking in power at all and its got enough CPU power and RAM to run whatever I choose but Id like to get the minimum usage down a little. As someone who used Arch for quite a long time, Mint feels like it uses a lot of power to run Cinnamon compared to Arch's lightweight KDE DE. I also want something that is stable rather than bleeding edge or whatever the alternative is called because I cannot be bothered with having to sit figuring out how to fix problem after problem, or rollback an update that has broken a thing I use. Id also like to have some resource monitor similar to what Arch has where you can change the display style of cpu, ram and network and so on, I do like me some nice graphs and tables.

Ive been using Linux full time since around the days of Covid, and in that time Ive had a few laptops and tried a lot of distros. This includes: Mint, Manjaro, OpenSuse, Debian, Lubuntu, Ubuntu, and maybe a couple more. I cant stand the Gnome dekstop, I refuse to use Fedora as I hate the name as petty as that sounds, and having KDE would be a huge part of my choice as I like everything it offers and how I can tailor it to my own preferences exactly. I have intel integrated graphics so there is no Nvidia bullsh*t to deal with either. This laptop will be my main laptop until it is dead and I use it just for browsing the web, YouTube, some code writing and watching movies. I dont play any games on it at all really as I have my desktop for that, so I dont need anything tailored towards gaming or other intense use.

What would folk recommend? Is there anything that is an obvious answer? Please not Arch though, that thing feels like it is there for no reason other than to break and on top of that, the entire communtiy is a cesspit of sweaty gatekeeping menaces that seem to think if you dont know how to launch an interplanetary expedition using nothing more than the terminal you shouldnt even utter the name.
 


Sounds to me you're a bit picky. I don't mean anything bad by it, but it would be really hard for something to meet your very specific requirements.

So why not build your own from the ground up? Go for raw Debian and make it EXACTLY into what you want to have.
 
Last edited:
not my favourite, but you could try OpenSUSE [ KDE plasma offering]
 
BigBadBeef said:
Sounds to me you're a bit picky. I don't mean anything by it, but it would be really hard for something to meet your very specific requirements.

So why not build your own from the ground up? Go for raw Debian and make it EXACTLY into what you want to have.
Click to expand...
Youre not wrong at all, Im definitely picky with it but I am feeling like I dont know how to get what Im looking for now. As much as I do like Mint, its not offering exactly what I want. The difficulty in finding something that is what Im looking for is why Im not just distro hopping, I have a few things to do online right now that I need to get done asap so this was posted in the hopes that somebody would know of something that was a good fit for me.

Debian is one that I was considering as I like that and I know it has KDE support too, so unless somebody can suggest some distro that somehow offers more than that, Ill probably end up going there.
Thanks for your input, its appreciated
 
Brickwizard said:
not my favourite, but you could try OpenSUSE [ KDE plasma offering]
Click to expand...
I tried OpenSUSE a while ago and although I dont mind it at all, I cant seem to get a good grip on using the terminal in it. Ive been suggested Debian with KDE and I do like that so I may end up moving back over there
 
A lot of us use Fedora. If you want something close to Mint but with KDE, you can try Kubuntu, or KDE neon.
 
With what you have said I would go with debian KDE - It won't be the latest and greatest but is very solid and gives room to customize. My second Choice would be PCLinuxOS. Just because I like it and it has a good KDE. They are working on plasma 6 which is what I'm using right now. Good luck on you search. MX would be my other choice.
 
MX Linux has KDE, I use it on my main rig & quite enjoy it. it's a debian distro so it's not bleeding edge but it seems to work well. for my main rig I crave stability.
 
FatDroid said:
Youre not wrong at all, Im definitely picky with it but I am feeling like I dont know how to get what Im looking for now. As much as I do like Mint, its not offering exactly what I want. The difficulty in finding something that is what Im looking for is why Im not just distro hopping, I have a few things to do online right now that I need to get done asap so this was posted in the hopes that somebody would know of something that was a good fit for me.

Debian is one that I was considering as I like that and I know it has KDE support too, so unless somebody can suggest some distro that somehow offers more than that, Ill probably end up going there.
Thanks for your input, its appreciated
Click to expand...
Honestly from what I have heard about Debian and presume about your skill level and particular needs, although I personally have never used Debian, I would recommend trying it out! Debian with KDE set up exactly like you need/prefer!

I used Fedora but their main os update broke my system, so I distro hopped until I landed on LMDE, I loved LMDE so much and would still be using it today if it worked better with NVIDIA and had easier driver support, It was hours of troubleshooting till I just went to Linux Mint, so far staying with linux mint, because it has “just worked”

the point I am making with all this is: the next system I want to try is Debian with KDE, so please if you do choose to try it, let me know how it goes/how hard or easy it is to set up!
 
Linux Mint is great everything is pretty easy to figure out for the most part. I was using it 7 years ago and today its the best its ever been.
 
As Molly Meldrum would say, do yourselves a favor.................................stick with Mint. And as Tina Turner would say.............................Simply the Best. What more can i say. I have chased other Distros for nigh on 20 years but always returned to Mint.
 
G'day, Dale.

1. Do you still have the rig described here? https://www.linux.org/threads/can-i-use-cinnamon-ui-on-xfce.44788/post-190035

If not, perhaps you can give us an update, via an

inxi -Fxz

If you do that, be sure if you have additional drives to have them plugged in.

2. Do you have a USB stick (pen drive/flash drive) of 32 GB or 64 GB , and if not, do you have the resources to get one?

On my rig, I run 65 Distros, and have run up to 90 on it before a reorganisation in September. Reasons can be found in the link in my signature.

If I can get that inxi data, I can better suggest some options, but ultimately it is your decision to make.

BTW if you like the functionality of Fedora but not the name, you could try Ultramarine linux, I find it quite good.

Cheers and have a safe and happy New Year all,

Wizard
 
I get your aversion to the name “Fedora.” Honestly, I used to avoid it for similar reasons, it just didn’t appeal to me, and I wasn’t a fan of its stance on third-party software. But over time, as I tried different distros, I came to realize that Fedora is far more than its name or early reputation. It’s evolved into a solid, modern distro that’s incredibly stable and efficient.

Fedora KDE spin, in particular, won me over. It delivers a fantastic KDE experience, combines stability with up-to-date software, and doesn’t have the constant troubleshooting you’d expect with something like Arch. As for third-party software, Fedora has made strides in making it easier to enable repos like RPM Fusion, so it’s much less of a hassle now.

The name might still not be your favorite, but once you experience how well Fedora KDE fits your needs, you’ll see why it’s worth overlooking.

I came to like the little f-infinite logo on neofastfetch :p
 
Since starting out with Linux a decade ago, I've tried scores of mainstream distros. I long ago settled down to using 'Puppy' Linux as my daily driver.

I wouldn't recommend her to everybody. A single-user 'hobbyist' distro, designed in such a way that you can tear it to bits and re-build it pretty much the way you want to, and intended to keep older hardware useful won't appeal to many.....who basically want a modern, stable, well-spec'd OS they can fire up and it just 'works' and does everything they want.

Even though I get the occasional "itch" to try out summat else, it ends up reminding me why I always return to the sanity of the "kennels". Puppy can be as "basic" - or as "advanced" - as I choose to make her. In all honesty, the only other two OSs I've found that I actually like spending time with are HaikuOS (inspired by the advanced-for-its-time BeOS of the late '90s), and Google's ChromeOS-Reflex (this is the build designed to work on any hardware other than a Chromebook). I have the latter running from a CF card-sized PATA KingSpec SSD in a home-brewed external enclosure, via a PATA-to-SATA adapter (GBP £2.00 off eBay) and a USB 3.0-to-SATA cable. Works like a charm.

(My daily work-flow is primarily web-based anyway - I spend better than 90% of my time online - and I've used Chrome since day 1 back in 2008, so it made sense for me to run ChromeOS.....only this way, I get the benefit of far more powerful hardware, and none of Big Brother's arbitrary, half-baked restrictions).

There's no getting away from the fact Fedora IS good at what it does. Seems a bit daft getting "hung-up" over summat as minor as a name..!


Mike. :p
 
Last edited:
Hi FatDroid. Go with Mageia. You won't be disappointed. It's not as popular as other distros but mainly because it's more of a "corporate-focused" distro (albeit being a "community distro" without a company behind it).

It is a rock solid rpm-based distro with KDE as its main DE, and full of tiny details that will make your day-2-day experience pretty enjoyable.

The story behind it is that it stated off as Mandrake distro back in 1998, a very polished french distro that had KDE 1.0 as it's primary (and only?) desktop environment back in the day. Then it merged with (or maybe bought) the brazilian distro "Connectiva" in the early 2000's and became Mandriva. Unfortunately Mandriva went out of business in 2011, but a bunch of former employees forked Mandriva's project as Mageia.

Fun fact: PCLinuxOS was also a fork of Mandriva but driven by a single developer/maintainer (and still is).

I've been using Mageia since 1998 (known as Mandrake back then) as my daily driver. And although I have other laptops with some debian & redhat based distros (yes....I don't throw away old HW), I always find myself loving Mageia's "rock-solid corporate feel" (and the reason why I still keep it as my daily driver after all these years).

Side Note: don't ask me why but I'm always more inclined toward RPM-based distros despite felling very comfortable with debian's package management. I of course always prefer compiling from source. But when in "lazy mode" I use distro packages to save some time. XD

In any case, I always favor rpm or deb packages over any other package management system such as flatpack or appimage (let aside snap packages which I totally dislike and don't even try...to say the least). That being said, Mageia's got an excellent package manager called RpmDrake with a wonderful interface and searching capabilities. It also has a very rich CLI package manager called "urpmi". And to top it all Mageia maintains full compatibility with dnf and yum, of you feel more comfortable with any of the latter.

I hope it helps.
 
Last edited:
FatDroid said:
Hello hello, how is everyone?

I want a distro that I can stick with, something a bit more advanced than Mint. I have no issues with it at at all as it works as it should and it offers (almost) all I want, but its missing a couple of things and feels a bit too beginner friendly for what Im looking for. Im not someone with years of expertise and experience with Linux, but Im capable of doing quite a bit with the OS and using the terimnal isnt a problem.
Mint doesnt have exactly what I would like, such as KDE desktop with support - it is available on Mint but it has not been supported for years. Less hardware usage would be nice too, my laptop isnt lacking in power at all and its got enough CPU power and RAM to run whatever I choose but Id like to get the minimum usage down a little. As someone who used Arch for quite a long time, Mint feels like it uses a lot of power to run Cinnamon compared to Arch's lightweight KDE DE. I also want something that is stable rather than bleeding edge or whatever the alternative is called because I cannot be bothered with having to sit figuring out how to fix problem after problem, or rollback an update that has broken a thing I use. Id also like to have some resource monitor similar to what Arch has where you can change the display style of cpu, ram and network and so on, I do like me some nice graphs and tables.

Ive been using Linux full time since around the days of Covid, and in that time Ive had a few laptops and tried a lot of distros. This includes: Mint, Manjaro, OpenSuse, Debian, Lubuntu, Ubuntu, and maybe a couple more. I cant stand the Gnome dekstop, I refuse to use Fedora as I hate the name as petty as that sounds, and having KDE would be a huge part of my choice as I like everything it offers and how I can tailor it to my own preferences exactly. I have intel integrated graphics so there is no Nvidia bullsh*t to deal with either. This laptop will be my main laptop until it is dead and I use it just for browsing the web, YouTube, some code writing and watching movies. I dont play any games on it at all really as I have my desktop for that, so I dont need anything tailored towards gaming or other intense use.

What would folk recommend? Is there anything that is an obvious answer? Please not Arch though, that thing feels like it is there for no reason other than to break and on top of that, the entire communtiy is a cesspit of sweaty gatekeeping menaces that seem to think if you dont know how to launch an interplanetary expedition using nothing more than the terminal you shouldnt even utter the name.
Click to expand...
you are very picky and for bad reasons... I would say fedora is a great advanced choice but you do not like the name so clearly it is no good. But when you get past the pettiness, you can try fedora with kde since you also hate gnome. I hear microsoft may have something for you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Members online

Total: 762 (members: 4, guests: 758)

Latest posts

Top